simon hart gave an example of the type of harassment being suffered.rience of the former bristol conservative mp, charlotte leslie. whose parents became victims of this particular abuse. their entire oil heating supply was drained into their garden by somebody who had an objection to charlotte's particular position on fracking, which was a slightly ironic way of dealing with an environmental consideration. but, nonetheless, it caused enormous distress, as did the scratching of "tory scum" in her elderly parents' car. labour's diane abbott said abuse had been turbo—charged by the use of the internet. 30 years ago, when i first became an mp, if you wanted to attack an mp, you had to write a letter — usually in green ink — you had to put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and you had to walk to the post box. now they press a button and you read vile abuse which, 30 years ago, people would have been frightened to even write down. so i accept that male politicians get abuse too, but i hope the one thing we can agree on in this chamber is that it's much wo

simon hart, you're a..., go get in the bin, i hope you stand in dog...brexit, and article 50 is going to get triggered anyway. and so it carries on. over the past few years, the uk's been caught up in a political whirlwind. every week seems to bring a new twist in the plot of a sometimes thrilling, sometimes chaotic political drama. but here at westminster, a lot of people are afraid that in the recent turbulence, the very nature of our political conversation may have changed for the worse. this was the most abusive and vindictive election campaign most of us have ever been involved with. mps have told this programme about an emerging culture of abuse and intimidation in public life. it should never be part of the job to receive this level of abuse. i've had death threats, i've had people tweeting that i should be hung, i've had rape threats, described as a pathetic, useless, fat, black... and, as well as the interviews you'll see in this film, we've spoken to a lot of mps off the record. almost all of them told us that they'd received at least some abus

the conservative simon hart said colleagues were targeted by people intent on driving them out of politicserview for tonight's westminster hour on radio 4, lord bew says today's heightened levels of abuse, particularly via the internet, may turn people off from standing for parliament or in local elections. it is particularly difficult to see what can be done about social media. we cannot afford to lose people of quality in our political life. we may be approaching a tipping point. this is a dangerous moment. we do not want to slide down a path, which was the case here in northern ireland for decades, of a culture of intimidation. he added that, while public debate must be vigorous, it must avoid what he called the tinge of nastiness and hatred that he said had emerged in more recent times. he said not enough had been done to condemn abusive behaviour by some activists during the general election and the new laws could be considered to protect candidates. eight people have been killed and at least 49 were seriously injured, in a stampede that broke out after a football match in senegal. a

the conservative simon hart said collea g u es conservative simon hart said colleagues were targetedriving them out of politics altogether. in an interview for tonight's westminster hour on radio 4, lord bew says today's heightened levels of abuse, particularly via the internet, they turned people off from standing for parliament or in local elections. turned people off from standing for parliament or in local electionsm is particularly difficult to see what can be done about social media. we cannot afford to lose people of quality in our political life. we may be approaching a tipping point. this is a dangerous moment. we do not want to slide down a path which was the case here in northern ireland for decades, of a culture of intimidation. he added that while public debate must be vigorously must avoid what he called the tinge of nothingness and hatred that he said had emerged in more recent times. he said not enough had been done to condemn abusive behaviour by some activists during the general election and the new laws could be considered to protect candidates. in just over an hou

and hearing from herfellow backbencher simon hart on what can be done to counter the abuse being levelledn that in the next half an hour but as for today, looks mainly dry wit spells of sunshine. one or two flies in the ointment, these were the system is working southwards through the night bringing initially heavy showers but they tend to beat out but nevertheless there could be some first thing. as a result, suddenly a comfortable night, not as chilly as yesterday morning but some brightness around with sunshine coming through, behind those weather systems, a scattering showers for scotland and northern ireland and increasing sunshine coming through after that initially cloudy start in the east and further west some good spells of sunshine but towards the north—west later in the day we see the next band of rain but with sunshine and light winds it looks like it will feel warmer in the north compared yesterday on a par in the south. more cloud in prospect certainly for saturday and some rain as well, certainly not a washout but things will dry up later on and warm air across the country

conservative mp simon hart has been trying to shine a light on this problem, and he, at least, is convincedists on the left. there is more evidence of activity in this election orchestrated from the left than from the right, but i emphasise it was not exclusively like that. and so do you think, then, there's been a change in the character of left—wing activism in the last few years that you would say is responsible for the rise in this kind of language? well, that would be how it appears to me, yes, and, you know, but on the other end of the political spectrum, labour's cat smith, a member of the shadow cabinet, and a close ally ofjeremy corbyn, has quite a different story to tell. what we saw from the conservative party during the election was the singling out of, let's be honest, diane abbott, and some of the very personal attacks i think bordered on the racist during the conservative party's official so are you saying that the conservative party has officially sanctioned racist campaigning against people like sadiq khan and diane abbott? i think when the conservative party campaign, offi

well, after that debate i caught up with simon hart and asked if he'd been surprised by what he'd heardy been surprised from what i've heard from members of all parties and certainly the increased amount of abuse people have been suffering from between the years 2015—17. to me, it's about the abuse which is being received by members of the public, by volunteers, by donors, people who are associating with us. we have a degree of protection and we are sort of semi—used to it. but it's actually all the other people around election time who are getting an equal amount of hassle and i'm as interested in the impact on them as the impact on colleagues here. theresa may has announced that there is now going to be an investigation into all of this. but where does it start and what do you particularly want it to look at? to my mind, it's got to quantify the extent of the problem. take evidence from colleagues, volunteers, the public, election officers. get a real feel for the extent of this problem, talk to the social media platforms. then it's got to identify where we have existing law to deal w